


(for you) i would get beat to smithereens

by flooded_in_the_sky



Series: without you i am surely the last of our kind [2]
Category: Captain Marvel (2019), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/F, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Reunions, not explicit character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 15:42:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flooded_in_the_sky/pseuds/flooded_in_the_sky
Summary: !! spoilers for avengers: endgame !!after everything that happened, there's somebody carol needs to see.





	(for you) i would get beat to smithereens

The fight was more than halfway over when she arrived, destroying the ship that had been hovering menacingly over the remains of the Avengers’ compound. As soon as people started reappearing on planets light-years away, Carol made a break for Earth, leaving a hasty apology to the people she’d been helping. Because if those people were back, it meant that everybody on Earth was back. That  _ Maria _ was back.

She couldn’t waste a second. 

Thanos was supposed to be dead, she thought. But here he was, full army and all. The Avengers on the ground were dirt-covered and weary, but in larger numbers than she remembered. Carol landed and threw herself in the fight, pausing only when a kid no more than seventeen holding onto the gauntlet and the Stones for dear life introduced himself as Peter Parker and let himself be thrown onto the back of Valkyrie’s steed. 

When he charged the group of women she’d joined, she didn’t flinch. When he punched her after knocking out three other Avengers, she didn’t flinch. When he removed the Power Stone and sent her flying across the blackened earth, she didn’t flinch. Sure, she coughed a bit, and it took her a minute or two to get up, but she didn’t flinch. Of course, by then, it was too late. 

This was not how she anticipated victory to come. Not with the fiercest enemy she’d known turned to ash like he’d done to so many others. Not with Tony Stark slumped up against the rubble, crowded by people, Peter among them. Not with the forever stubborn light in his eyes gone and his body destroyed.

 

* * *

 

The funeral was small. Quiet. Not what she would have expected, from what she knew of Stark. But, Carol supposed, the last five years did a number on everybody. Maybe this little gathering by the lake he lived on was exactly what he wanted. 

Fury stood behind her, an ever-calming presence in a storm of recovery efforts and general superheroing. She’d cried for him almost as much as she had for Maria, but she’d never tell him that. He might’ve been able to guess, if he tried. But right now they were silent, listening to the eulogies and waiting. 

After the wreath had been released onto the water, the group dissipated for the most part, Peter and the woman who’d come with him, maybe his mother, staying behind, with a tall man who looked just shy of being a teenager talking to Pepper on the porch. 

“You got something you need to take care of here?” Fury asked her with a gentle nudge.

“No. No, we can go.” Carol took one more look around the cabin on the lake, the trees hanging above her. “Just wish I knew him better.”

Fury sighed, and they walked to their beat-up car in silence. 

 

* * *

 

 

“Where are we going?” Carol asked as they pulled away. 

“Not too sure. Why?”

“Do you remember the woman we had to find when I first came back to Earth?” Carol asked, suddenly needing to get out of the car and to her suit and to that farmhouse in Louisiana as fast as she could. 

“Yes.”

“I need to see her. She was-she was gone the last time I visited.”

“Alright.”

Carol landed in the yard, trying not to do too much damage to the lawn. The neighbors were forgiving, she was sure. 

The place looked the same as it did before, like it was frozen in time with Carol. The moment she looked up at the door, it swung open, and she heard a faint cry. Carol took off running, meeting Maria and Monica halfway. The trio crashed together, sinking down into the grass in a pile of watery smiles. Monica hugged Carol as tight as she could, whispering, “You came back,” over and over, and Carol held her, blinking back tears.

“You came back,” she said after a pause, loosening the hug, and then squeezed tightly again. 

“I told you, I’m always gonna come back. I promise.”

“I know, I know. We worry.”

_ We. _ Carol looked up to Maria, and the tears she’d been holding back spilled over. Gently prying herself from Monica, she pulled Maria into a hug tighter than she’d ever given before, because some small part of her mind was convinced that Maria would float away into the air like she had before. Maria’s arms nestled themselves around her neck and her waist, and it felt like they were one single unit. Like there was nothing the universe could do to tear them apart, not ever again. 

They stayed like that for what could’ve been an eternity. Maria pulled her head from the crook of Carol’s neck and stared at her for a moment.

“You cut your hair, huh?” She reached up and ran her hand through it, coming back down to wipe some of the tears from Carol’s face. “It’s a good look for you.”

Carol replied with a kiss to her temple. “You think so?”

 

* * *

 

 

Eventually the three made their way back into the house, watching the sunset from the windows at the back of the kitchen. Carol closed her eyes at the memory of the place where she’d sat, passed out with grief. If Maria noticed, she didn’t ask, squeezing Carol’s hand instead. She squeezed back, taking a sip from the glass of water Monica had shoved in front of all of them.

“So what now?” Maria asked, still staring out the window with her head rested on Carol’s shoulder. 

“I think I can send the Sakaarians a rain check for now. They’d understand.”

**Author's Note:**

> hello all! i said i was gonna do a sequel to my last fic, and here it is! i hope you all liked it! keeping with a theme, the title is from smithereens by twenty one pilots. here's my [tumblr](https://flooded-in-the-sky.tumblr.com/) if you want to drop by, and thanks for reading!


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